Evanston: A Rare Comedy

EVANSTON: A RARE COMEDY

by Michael Yates Crowley
directed by Michael Rau

Produced in 2009 at PS 122 and HERE Arts Center in New York City

EVANSTON: A RARE COMEDY begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl in deepest suburbia and ends when a meeting of The Evanston Women’s Book Club goes horribly awry. In between, a transgender student dreams of death, a housewife dreams of Mexico, an economics professor has an affair with a Whole Foods check-out clerk, and the financial crisis rages on. The latest show from the Wolf 359 team—director Michael Rau and writer/performer Michael Yates Crowley—takes a chainsaw to language, convention and pretension to create a new kind of American story-telling: raw, sexy, and painfully funny. Inspired by the words of Psalm 137 and the streets of Evanston, Illinois, A RARE COMEDY asks: how can we sing a song of joy in this strange land?